A Sun for the Dying

by Jean-Claude Izzo

  Karim shrugged. He really didn’t give a shit if Driss stopped speaking to him. He gave us both the finger and took off. It was the cops who brought him back, five days later. “We found one of your protégés,” they said, laughing. To them, the Young Strays was just a den of junkies.

  I felt bad for Karim, seeing him come back like that, flanked by the cops. Bad for Driss too. You can’t just stop speaking to someone like that, I thought. So, one morning, I just lost it. I waited until Christine, the secretary of the center, went to the toilet, and then I took her place behind the desk.

  When she came back, I said to her, in a serious voice, “Sit down, mademoiselle.”

  Christine smiled, as she always does. With that pretty smile of hers, which calms us down and makes us think that everyone at the center really cares about us.

  “So, Christine,” I said, “how did you get to France? What was the name of the boat?”

  The others came closer. Michel and Driss first of all. And then the others like me. Karim, Faisal, Mario, Nedim, Hiner . . . They were all laughing.

  Christine played along with me, until I went a little too far, past the point of no return.

  “Oh, so it wasn’t a boat, it was a truck? . . . Eighteen hundred miles, hidden under a truck. I see . . . All the way from Kurdistan? My God.”

  Hiner came closer. That was what he’d lived through. He’d swallowed the whole of this crappy life on the road. For eighteen hundred miles.

  I looked Christine straight in the eyes, and said, very solemnly, “Ah, so there’s poverty in your country . . .”

  That was when she cut me off. She’d stopped smiling.

  “All right,” she said. “That’s enough, Abdou. I have work to do.”

  The telephone was ringing, so that much was true.

  And it was true she was up to her ears in work. Because of us. Us young strays were always creating lots of paperwork.

  And not all my ideas are good ones.

  The only reason I’m talking about myself is to explain. So that you get a better idea of things. Those fucking pimps had left Rico for dead. He had no idea how long he’d stayed there like that. Two days, three days. Maybe more. As soon as he had regained consciousness the first time, he had dragged himself to the mattress, and then everything had gone black again.

  And in the blackness was the horror. The blows started raining down again. Endlessly. On his back, his stomach, his face. He hurt so much, he couldn’t feel his body anymore. He hurt so much, he wanted to scream. And in his head, a bell kept ringing, like in a boxing ring. One knockout blow after another.

  What really woke him was the cough. And the desire to throw up. Thick, yellowish phlegm, mixed with a little blood. He had spat it out on the floor, without getting up. Every time he coughed, it seemed to rip his stomach apart. It was only gradually that he had realized he was stinking of shit and piss. He’d done it in his clothes. Not in his sleep, but while those scumbags were beating him up. Or just after. His whole body had let go. With the fear, and the pain.

  At some point, he had crawled to his rucksack, and had taken a whole strip of Dolipran and washed it down with the only beer he had left. Then he had fallen asleep again.

  “Mirjana!”

  He had woken with a start, feeling anxious. Without getting up off the floor, he had looked around the room. Searching for the book of poems. He had been reading it when those guys had arrived. So the book should have been against the wall. It wasn’t there. Rico was relieved. She had taken it with her.

  She would live.

  “Mirjana,” he had whispered.

  And he had fallen asleep again with a smile.

  When he had finally seen his face in a mirror, he’d had a fright. His whole face was swollen. His right eye, his cheek. His nose. And his lips, which had doubled in size, were split in several places.

  It was in that state that he had arrived in Marseilles.

  If Léa had been there, waiting for him, she would ­obviously have taken him in her arms and consoled him, looked after him, pampered him.

  “I love you,” she would have said.

  But Léa wasn’t there.

  Only soldiers in fatigues with submachine guns in their hands, patrolling among the travelers. A whole bunch of riot police too.

  A city at war, Rico had thought.

  Sarajevo.

  But it was only Marseilles.

  It was Marseilles.

  “I’m here, Titi,” he had muttered, threading his way through the crowd to avoid the soldiers and the cops.

  Marseilles.

  The end of the road. His road.

  He had left the station. To his right, he had seen three dropouts propped against a wall, apparently having an afternoon nap. He had slumped against the wall, next to one of them.

  “Hi,” he had said. “Do you know a shelter where I could spend the night?”

  21.

  ONE DAY, MAYBE, I’LL DISCOVER BROTHERS

  Rico’s crash pad was not far from the harbor of la Joliette. A few hundred yards from the harbor station, on Quai de la Tourette. A gloomy place, scheduled for redevelopment. The disused warehouses were all boarded up to deter squatters, and their walls were covered in posters, tags and obscene graffiti.

  Rico had spent so long hanging around the docks, he’d finally found a way in other than by the street. A real stroke of luck.

  Late one afternoon, he took me there. We had been inseparable for two weeks.

  “You’ll see . . . You’ll see . . .” he kept saying as we walked.

  He was really happy. I wanted to hold his hand, the way I used to hold my father’s hand, but I didn’t dare.

  From Place de Lenche, we turned onto Rue de l’Évêché, and walked as far as the cathedral of La Major. A heavy building caked with grime, shaped like a rum baba, surrounded by the road leading to the coast highway. We went all the way around the outside of it.

  “That,” Rico said with a laugh, “is Place de l’Esplanade.”

  I could see why he was laughing. The square had disappeared under the four-lane road. There were lots of cars, going as fast as if they were on a racing circuit.

  “How do we cross?”

  “Easy. We just cross.” He pointed to the white stripes on the asphalt. “We’re within our rights, there’s a pedestrian crossing.”

  Rico raised his left arm, like a cop, and set off, pushing his cart in front of him. I followed, with my eyes closed. There was a lot of furious braking, and hooting of horns, but we got to the other side in one piece.

  “It’s like everything else, you mustn’t be afraid. Mirjana used to say that.”

  We were at the top of a broad flight of steps leading to a street. Rue François-Moisson. I always came that way, later. I didn’t want to be knocked down by a car. I was too young to die.

  “We could have come from down there.”

  “True. But I prefer not to climb.”

  We went down the steps until we reached the first terrace. On the left, in a recess, there was a low, rusty door, which led to a narrow gallery. The stench was amazing. Like centuries of cat’s piss and dogshit.

  “Are you O.K.?” Rico asked, seeing me pull a face.

  “You don’t have a gas mask, do you?”

  “It gets better, you’ll see.”

  He picked up a big torch from where it lay hidden behind a parpen, and we walked more than five hundred yards on uneven ground.

  In fact, the stench came from a pipe that ran along the side of the gallery. A sewer pipe, I guess. I realized now the source of the smell Rico carried around with him, an acrid smell, a mixture of decay and damp. I’d thought at first it was just because he was dirty. He was so impregnated with it, you could even smell it on his breath sometimes.

  “This place must be infested with rats,” I said.

  “I don’t know about rats. A rat, yes.”

  “What do you mean, a rat?”

  “I mean, a rat. There’s one who comes to see m
e regularly. We’re pals. If I wake up at night, I see his red eyes. He ­watches over me.”

  I shuddered. I hate rats. They give me the creeps. Ever since I travelled on that fucking freighter. The machine room was full of them. And the noise they made! Squealing. Crawling over each other. I had felt the fucking things crawling over me too.

  “Oh, yeah?” I said ironically. “So what do you do, feed him?”

  “I told you, we’re pals. I talk to him, and I feed him. You won’t believe this, but he loves sausage. He sits down on his hind paws . . .” He stopped to describe the scene, even imitating the rat. “ . . . and he holds the slice in his little front paws and gobbles it down. It’s so funny.”

  I thought of the times I used to watch Tom and Jerry on TV with Zineb. “And does he have a little towel to wipe his face?” I joked.

  Rico shone his torch in my face. “What has that rat ever done to you?”

  “Nothing . . . Nothing . . .”

  “Then don’t be nasty to him, dammit.”

  We came to an openwork wooden door. This was where Rico had settled in. It was what we call a fundouk in Algiers.

  “The rats and I are almost the same family now.”

  He opened the door, then lit two big candles he’d filched from the church of Saint-Ferréol on Quai des Belges.

  “Not bad, eh?”

  It was a shock, I can tell you!

  His crash pad was like Ali Baba’s cave. There must have been at least two or three hundred plastic bags, filled to the brim with all sorts of objects. Everything neatly sorted. The books with the books, the knick-knacks with the knick-knacks, the clothes with the clothes . . . And all the bags divided into groups according to their contents.

  I let out a whistle. “Shit! What do you do with all this?”

  “I earn my living, what do you think?”

  Rico had had enough of begging. Even after going over and over Titi’s advice in his head. It really turned his stomach, he said. So he’d invented a system. If someone gave him a coin, he’d offer a gift in return.

  “And does it work?”

  He shrugged. “There’s a bit of hustling involved. You see, the guy or the woman . . . they slip you a coin out of . . . compassion. They’ve just been shopping and they feel a little guilty because they have food to eat, clothes to wear, and so on . . . But it’s never more than a few coins. With my system I can get between five and ten francs out of them! Minimum!”

  Every day he would set up at the entrance to the Bourse Center, near the Canebière. A three-storey shopping mall. Rico would lay out a few books and objects on a clean sheet of newspaper and get to work.

  He went up to people, more or less the way he had seen Titi doing it at the Aligre market. But confidently, without trying to make them feel sorry for him. “Hey Isabelle, you wouldn’t have a little something for me? Hey, Jeannot, nothing for me today?” Rico called everyone Isabelle and Jeannot.

  I went to see him “at work” one day. As soon as someone slipped him a coin, he’d take the person by the arm and draw him over to his display.

  “Wait, come here, I’m going to give you a little gift. What would you like? The pink china cat? A book? The baseball cap? You choose . . .”

  The person was trapped. Even if he said no, he’d end up with something and be forced to say thank you to Rico. And then Rico would open his hand and say with a smile, “Hold on, Jeannot, you’re three francs short. The book costs five francs.”

  That threw people.

  “Well, I don’t know if I have three francs,” the “customer” would say.

  And he would start searching his pockets, looking in his wallet. It would never even occur to him to give his “gift” back to Rico.

  Rico had an eagle eye. “Isn’t that ten francs you have there?” he’d ask.

  “Oh, yes,” the other person would say.

  “Here, I’ll give you back your two francs, and we’re fine. O.K.?”

  Only then did Rico say thank you, have a nice day, that kind of thing. Always remembering to compliment the wo­men. “You’re a cute one, Isabelle.” “You have a lovely wife, Jeannot.”

  I never saw anyone tell him to piss off with his gifts. I think people enjoyed his trickery. I even saw a guy shake his hand once. Rico had just given him a book with a blue cover. Spelling Course by E. and Madame Bled.

  “It’s extremely rare,” he said.

  “Come back some time, Jeannot. I have plenty more. Real collector’s items . . .”

  Rico emptied his cart, and started sifting through the things he’d picked up during the day.

  I collapsed onto an old mattress wedged between the bags of books. The teddy bear was there, propped against a wall.

  “Hello, Zineb,” I murmured.

  I don’t know if Rico heard me or what, but he turned and scowled at me. “You’re still after that bear!”

  “Shit, Rico! I can say hello to him, can’t I?”

  “Yeah, yeah, O.K. . . .”

  I caught sight of a bicycle at the far end of the room. “What’s that bike?”

  “Just a bike.”

  Rico was grouchy. Because of Zineb. I mean, because of the bear.

  “Come on,” I said, standing up. “Don’t make a face.”

  “It was lying at the bottom of the steps for a week. Haven’t you ever had a bike either?”

  We looked at each other. The dickhead was really sulking. I didn’t understand why he was so upset about that bear.

  “Yes,” I replied, gently. “Well, my brother did. I like cycl­ing . . . Does it work?”

  “Yes . . . I pushed it along the street. Just to see. It runs smoothly enough. I mean, you wouldn’t win the Tour de France with it.”

  “Well . . .”

  “I always dreamed of having one. I’d have liked to ride along the beach on Sunday, with Sophie and Julien. But Sophie . . .”

  He went and sat down on the mattress to smoke a cigarette. I joined him. He picked up the bear and sat it down between his legs.

  “The thing is, it reminds me of my son, this bear. I bought him one once that looked a bit like that. He never let it out of his sight. I wonder if he still has it.”

  “Why shouldn’t he still have it?”

  “Who knows? There are many things we don’t understand . . .” He looked at me, with that tender look that did me so much good. “At night, I hug the bear. I tell myself it brings me a little closer to my son.”

  “You miss him, huh?” I said, stupidly.

  “I miss everything, Abdou. But I don’t want anything. Can you explain that? I don’t even want to see him, or give him a hug, or kiss him.”

  I felt like crying, dammit.

  “But maybe he wants it. It’s like with me and my folks . . .”

  I started bawling.

  I’d just remembered them, for the first time since that fucking night. It was July 5th. National Independence Day. The streets were swarming with people. My father was holding my hand. My mother was walking beside him. We were looking for a taxi. He had promised to take us to Sidi Ferruch, a beautiful beach about nine miles from Algiers.

  I was happy.

  There were lots of happy days, in that country.

  On the way back, I remember, the radio in the taxi had announced that a bomb had just gone off in the market at Baradi, fifteen miles away. As if nothing had happened, the driver put on a cassette. By Cheb Mami, my favourite singer.

  Ayit fik en’ssaaf ouanti m’aamda

  Li bik biya oua Alache sada

  Disaster didn’t exist.

  It was still a long way away.

  Alche Alache Alache Ya lile

  Alche Alache Alache Ya ain

  Alche Alache Alache . . .

  Rico drew me to him. “We can’t do anything about these things, Abdou. It’s as if life has gotten out of control, and . . . No, not life . . . Evil. I don’t know why. Titi didn’t know. Or Félix. Or Mirjana. Maybe you’ll know, one day . . .”

  I
sniffed, then wiped my tears. “You think, one day . . .”

  “Maybe, maybe . . . when millions of people are dead. Wait . . .”

  He lifted his head and took a book from under the mattress. The Odyssey by Homer. A piece of paper was sticking out.

  “I found this in a book. Not this one, another one. Here, read it.”

  The handwriting was beautiful. Big and round. A girl’s handwriting, I thought. Perhaps when millions of people have been destroyed, others will be created, and I will discover brothers where I thought I had none.

  “That’s a bit preachy, isn’t it?”

  “It may explain a few things . . .”

  “Maybe . . . I think we all get taken in by words. It’s like with the judge at juvenile court. He says he’s only there to help you, says it bold as brass. At first, you think he’s being good to you. But as soon as you think about it a little, as soon as you read between the lines, you realize he’s going to send you back to your country when you’re eighteen. Whether you like it or not.”

  “I don’t know, Abdou. All those things . . . I don’t know anymore. You see . . .” Suddenly, a grave look came over his face and he pointed at my burns. “Does that hurt?” he asked.

  He almost put his hand on my cheek. But he didn’t. His fingers simply traced the scars in the air. The way he had traced the ass of the girl in the poster. With the same tenderness.

  With love.

  It was the first time someone had dared ask me that question. If anyone else had done it, even at the center, I’d have punched him in the face for sure.

  “Yes, sometimes. I have to be careful it doesn’t get infected.”

  “You can have the bear, if you like.” And he thrust it at me.

  “No kidding?”

  “Do I look as if I’m kidding?”

  “You’re great!”

  Our eyes met.

  “I think I’ll leave him here. What do you say? He’s fine here. And anyway . . . I can come and see him whenever I like, right?”